Left behind was Salazar’s 3-year-old daughter, Victoria. Salazar’s mother, Barbara Lessar, took the small girl into her home to raise.

A police investigation determined that Rogers had been drinking the night he randomly kidnapped Salazar.

Dwayne Kelly Rogers

Police and crime scene investigators went to Rogers’ apartment less than a mile from where Salazar’s body was found, searching for evidence.

One of the investigators discovered a drop of blood in Rogers’ bathtub.

The blood was sent to a Colorado Bureau of Investigation laboratory. A CBI chemist determined that the blood was Salazar’s.

Pueblo police also looked into Rogers’ background and found evidence that he was a very troubled man going through marital and career troubles. His business had recently failed and his wife divorced him.

In the summer of 2006, Rogers agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges that took a life prison sentence off the table. First-degree murder and kidnapping charges were dismissed. He was charged with second-degree murder and kidnapping.

Rogers’ own attorneys presented evidence at the sentencing hearing indicating that Rogers is bipolar and has multiple-personality disorder. Rogers blamed an evil alter ego for committing the murders.

“I do not blame the Salazar family for wanting me dead,” Rogers said at his sentencing on Sept. 26, 2006, in the Pueblo County District Court building.

Based on the plea deal, Rogers could have gotten 60 years in prison. Judge Rosalie Vigna sentenced him to 54 years in prison, explaining that she didn’t give him the maximum sentence because he had come forward and confessed.

“I’m not satisfied,” Salazar’s father, Edward Salazar, told a Pueblo Chieftain reporter. “No amount of time can make me satisfied. But as long as (Rogers) is off the street and can’t hurt someone else’s child this way, I can live with this.”

By then the Mystic Caberet had closed. Colorado Springs police had continued investigating unsolved murders of women. They not only looked at murders but also severe beatings for a possible tie to Rogers.

I would like to see those murders closed as much as any other resident, but closing them doesn’t equal justice. Hope he confesses to these murders or more evidence is presented, this looks great on paper but doesn’t seem like enough pointing to him. Sorry.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.